film

Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

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The 9th and only installment of Hellraiser not to feature Doug Bradley, Revelations marks a disappointing look at the future of franchise.

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I’ve watched a ton of horror movies, everything from those of the early silent era all the way up through up today’s fascination with low-budget found-footage. Out of them all, the Hellraiser series is easily one of my favorites. Ok, so the back half of the series is hardly likable compared to the first four, but it’s still a story I like to follow. “Pinhead” (I actually despise the moniker, but the only alternative is “Lead Cenobite,” which few people would understand) has a very calculated and almost passive malevolence that his rivals – the likes of icons like Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, etc. – have always lacked, which certainly sets him apart from the other huge horror franchises of the 80’s.  Is he a better villain than Freddy or Chucky or Leatherface?  I’m not one to say.  But he certainly is different, and it helps that the Hellraiser films were always (almost always) treated with  a certain amount of reverence that just isn’t present in similar horror films.  I can dig the camp and shlock factor as much as anyone, but sometimes I do crave a dark and sinister tale that actually takes itself seriously.

The series got off to a fantastic start with the first 2 films: the original Hellrasier and then Hellbound.  The third movie, Hell on Earth, which for many years was quite difficult to find on DVD, brings a sizable wallop of camp into the franchise.  It’s not on par with the first 2, but it’s a watchable enough B-movie production that more or less follows the story thus far.  “Pinhead,” unrestrained by his “rules,” goes a little nuts and gets dragged down to little more than “mass murderer” status, but hey, it’s still a reasonably competent piece of horror.  The fourth installment, Bloodline, was the last theatrical release and attempts to dig more into the mythos of the Cenobites and the Lament Configuration.  The budget is clearly lacking and the acting talent is slim, though I do appreciate what the filmmakers were attempting with the past-present-future setup.  It’s a pretty good story all in all, and I think with the right production values and less interference (the producers demanded major changes to the script, removed large expository sequences, and the director walked off set midway through) it would stand as a much more memorable entry.  It’s a real shame that this piece was so heavily butchered by the suits, as I think Yagher’s intended film would’ve been amazing.

Then we get into the dregs of the series, films 5 through 8, though some (not me) will lump Hellseeker in with “the better ones.”  All of these were adapted from unused and unrelated scripts and boy does it show. Five and six, subtitled Inferno and Hellseeker respectively, are easily my least favorite.  They both attempt to showcase a different sort of “hell” in the form of everlasting psychological torment with Pinhead pulling the strings, relegating the Cenobites to mere punitive agents.  Not only are these films murky and boring, but they don’t at all fit with the Cenobites’ worship of the flesh.  Deader and Hellworld (films seven and eight) are more modern in approach and “better” in the sense that they’re easier to watch and comprehend, but the stories are again flimsy and the Cenobites, nor their machinations, are central to either plot.  They’re also painted in a more traditionally evil light rather than as devotees to their bizarre religion.

After all of that bullshit, it seemed like anything would be an improvement.  There have been reports of a Hellraiser remake in the works since 2006, though year after year rolled by with little to no activity.  And then a couple of years ago I spotted Hellraiser: Revelations over at Walmart.  I almost picked it up, but not having direct access to my collection of horror has lessened my need to impulsively buy DVDs.  I read about it at some point and saw that it was universally despised, which made me feel a little better about not grabbing it at the time.

Finally it popped up here on Netflix (along with the other 8 films if anyone out there is interested) and I gave it a whirl.  It’s a crappy movie to be sure, but it isn’t quite as bad as it could be.  The production values are relatively decent and I think there’s a good idea wrapped up in there somewhere, but it isn’t executed well at all.  Clive Barker publicly dismissed the film over Twitter with something to the tune of, “this fuckin piece of shit is no fuckin child of mine” and Doug Bradley also released a statement about being approached to play the role of Pinhead once again, citing a very short shooting schedule and what he saw as “not a serious attempt to revive the franchise” as reasons why he declined.  Nobody Stephan Smith Collins dons the Pinhead mantle, and his odd portrayal is a lot of what makes the movie feel so damn weird.

Before I go on, it should be noted that Revelations has basically been a bullshit film from the get-go.  Dimension Films was about to loose the rights to the franchise, so they had to crank out a piece of work to hang on to their copyright.  It’s a shame that stupid legal shit has to mar the franchise even more, but I hope this means that they’re wanting to hang on to the rights for  a good reason.  The latest word from back in 2013 is that Barker and Bradley have been working together and that the long awaited remake is “very close to happening,” though I quit getting my hopes up over statements like these years ago.

The plot itself loosely plays off the stories of the first 2 films – a resurrected escapee of the Cenobites attempts to hide from them by consuming the flesh of others.  In this way, the Cenobites aren’t put at the forefront of the action, but honestly, this just wasn’t the right time to try and stick these unearthly explorers in the background.  Bradley, as Pinhead, and Barker’s original vision of this hell-like dimension benefited from short, effective bursts of screen time.  Unfortunately, this Collins character just can’t leave the viewer hanging on his performances in the same way, and although the visceral snippets are adequate, let’s remember that it’s 2015, not 1987, and we’ve already seen all of this done before.  The problem is that the director tries to simply recreate what we saw back in ’87 instead of doing anything new.

As a testament to how ill-equipped the filmmakers were to try to bring back Pinhead without Bradley, a guy named Fred Tatasciore is credited with Pinhead’s voice.  He tries to do a sort of slithery, serpentine thing with the character, as if in an attempt to bring a quiet, assured casualness to the character.  He’s calm and reserved (as Pinhead ought to be) but he fails deeply at expressing the regal, highly ordered nature that Bradley always brought to the table (even during the series’ lowest moments).  This could be the director’s fault as much as the actor’s; either way, if they wanted to do another Hellraiser film then fine, but why try to reinvent Pinhead?  Why not go a different direction instead of dreaming up a knowing subpar version of something that will always be compared to Bradley’s performance?

Tatascoire/Collins tries to deliver lines like, “the box…you opened it…summoned us…we came” but man, it just does not compare to Bradley’s slightly British, booming announcement from the first film, “THE  BOX.  You opened it; we came!”  We also hear other ineffective attempts, especially near the end with phrases like, “our appetite was sated” and “there is a deficit of flesh” in that same whispery, slightly inquisitive intonation that, while evoking remembrances of things like Bradley’s cold and stern, “Explorers – in the further regions of experience.  Demons to some; angels to others,” just don’t quite cut it and instead sound more like someone using “big words” for the first time.  Pinhead is/was a very orderly demon.  His existence was governed by rules and that sort of grotesque sterility is part of what gives these films their uniqueness.  Revelations, nor Garcia’s vision of Pinhead (or Collins’/Tatasciore’s portrayal) even begin to touch on this aspect.  Everything is a little grimier, a little messier, and a little more decayed.  It’s an effective look in its own regard, but it doesn’t speak nearly as much to the Cenobites’ otherwordliness as do the environs in the first few films.

I get that younger generations need an updated version of a character and an updated setting to fully appreciate these things.  We can harp on about “classics” as much as we want, but the truth is that all art is a product of its time and very few things can stand out as truly timeless.  I’m okay with bringing Hellraiser into modern times.  But I firmly believe that after 2 minutes spent with Bradley’s Pinhead versus Collins’/Tatasciore’s Pinhead, horror fans young and old will have a hard time denying the magnetic draw of Bradley and writing off the more recent performance as derivative and uninspired.  If we have to get a new vision of Hellraiser that doesn’t include Bradley, why not retire Pinhead and take the Cenobites themselves in a different direction?

Even though Revelations is a throwaway film for all intents and purposes, it does seem like someone actually gave a shit about the story of Hellraiser and the Cenobites at some point during the film’s production.  The Cenobites are portrayed more as catalysts rather than outright antagonists, and these films always worked much better when the plot was more than just good guys versus Cenobites.  I liked Pinhead much more as a devotee of the Order of the Gash rather than the alternatively conflicted soul and megalomaniac of later films and stories, including Barker’s own comic book series.  Barker seems to hold some resentment towards his character after all these years (and who could blame him, really), even going so far as to rid the world (and Hell) of Pinhead once and for all in his latest novel, The Scarlet Gospels.  

Allegedly a real remake is underway and very close to production, with Bradley on board as our favorite Cenobite and Barker’s direct involvement in the project.  It’s hard to know what to expect and whether or not this will be a remake or a proper reboot.  Personally I’m anxious to get back to the days of Leviathan and the labyrinth.  I enjoyed the first couple of film’s removal from he Abrahamic faiths, where the Cenobites existed neither as explicitly good nor evil, simply extra-dimensional practitioners of extreme sadomasochism.  It was more interesting to think of the Cenobites as one of possibly many extra-dimensional “cults” in the multiverse rather than representatives of the dichotomous view of a traditional heaven and hell.  One thing is for sure though, and that’s if someone doesn’t breathe some appropriate life into the Hellraiser saga at some point, we may end up waiting another 10 or 15 years for a respectable take on the series.

For the record, here’s how I’d rank the series from best to worst:

1. Hellraiser
2. Hellraiser II: Hellbound
3. Hellraiser: Bloodline (IV)
4. Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth
5. Hellraiser: Deader (VII)
6. Hellraiser: Hellworld (VIII)
7. Hellriaser: Hellseeker (VI)
8. Hellraiser: Revelations (IX)
9. Hellraiser: Inferno (V)

Written by The Cubist